Invisible Ink
by robin baby
Summary: Tag for 5x02 Family. Gibbs thinks about the past day and Hollis misunderstands him the way he wants her to. One-shot and complete.


It was becoming hard to deny it, really

**A/N: **This is something I wrote a while ago, after "Family" first aired, to be exact. Maybe someone's still interested. g

It's my take on how the relationship between Gibbs and Hollis fell apart.

I'll hug you (mentally) if you leave me a review!

**Disclaimer: **Not mine. Not imaginative enough.

'_I suppose I should be happy_

_to be misread_

_better be that than some of the other things_

_I have become.'_

_- Aimée Mann, Invisible Ink - _

It was becoming hard to deny it, really.

He had done his best, tried to keep it all from crumbling and getting out of control. But it had probably always been like wanting to fix a crack in a dam with nothing but a spatula of plaster.

It had worked just fine for quite a while, though. Because those few people who knew now, also knew him better than to touch upon the subject. Until today, that was, when Ziva had finally broken the pattern, upsetting a delicate balance with her quiet, unassumingly strung sentence.

_But you were a parent._

Standing in that room, he hadn't even been able to muster up irritation at her impudence, bringing up what she knew she shouldn't be talking about.

She had a lot more figured out than she let on, Ziva. About everyone and everything. She read gestures, behavior and meaningless words like few other people he knew, and she knew how to handle the knowledge. If there was someone he felt okay about to have found out about Shannon and Kelly, then it was Ziva.

_I'm sorry._

She had never said another word about it, because she had known that that had been as much as he would accept to hear from anybody.

He hadn't really been prepared to have such a clear and unmistakable reference tossed at him, all the way across a missing baby's room, on a day that wasn't really too much out of their kind of lives' ordinary.

But, somehow, he had been too tired of the whole charade, too worn to pretend not to have heard and rebuke Ziva by hurling back some assumptions, theories about or facts of the case at her, drawing one of his unmovable lines. He had been too tired to even ignore her.

So he'd just answered. Picked up the ball, actually acknowledged the truth of her statement, acknowledged that she knew and that there were feelings attached to that truth.

He considered that to be proof.

Jenny Sheppard's finding out about Shannon and Kelly was the crack in the shield he had drawn up around his past and a part of himself, the crack in the dam, and ever since waking up from his coma to a strange, changed world, and waking up from forgetting to a changed set of circumstances, that crack had grown longer, deeper, and more irreparable. Slowly and secretly at first, and then less and less ignorable by the day.

Until he had begun to feel exposed, his shield crumbling.

Like a water-repellant coat suddenly failing to serve its purpose.

Today, seeing the dead mother – or whatever she might in the end have been, by definition, to that child – seeing the parentsorwhatevertheywere desperate and afraid, seeing that young boy cry for the loss of his girlfriend and the baby she had born, he had suddenly felt as if all the strength that he been putting into hiding things, keeping feelings shut out, never talking and taking the blows rather than explaining himself when his tight-lipped manner became too much for someone yet again, was finally running dry.

A little while later, when the baby was back with his – well, with _parents_, at least, whether you wanted to call the Nelsons _real_ or not – he had watched a soaked DiNozzo burn the letter his girlfriend – or whatever Jeanne Benoît should be referred to in this bizarre, unfortunate story – had left him.

And suddenly he had thought that things weren't that different at all for him from how they were for Tony.

Jen had been wrong. It was that odd kind of haughtiness she sometimes seemed unable to help, not quite hypocritical, but a little bit all the same, that had led her to tell him it had been a mistake he'd made, falling in love with a target, that he should have known better.

It hadn't been a mistake. It had been an incalculable risk that Jen had taken, and should have done everything to prevent.

If not for Tony's sake, and least for that damn, ominous op.

The girl was a beauty, what had Jen been expecting? Not love, perhaps. But things like that weren't about ruling out unlikely possibilities, not even when _Anthony DiNozzo_ and _love_ were part of one and the same equation. Or about odds or better judgment.

None of that really mattered now, though.

The op had taken its inevitable turn, and now it all was down to the only thing it had ever been for Tony and Jeanne: lies.

And that probably was the point where his and Hollis' relationship didn't really differ.

He had come to realize that tonight, and now it clung to him like icy water that just wouldn't evaporate or let itself be dried off. It was heavy, too, but most of all, it was bitter. He had the taste on his tongue and the first two glasses of Bourbon hadn't been able to wash it away.

Lies.

Lies were nothing to build anything upon. They were quicksand, and eventually they would swallow and bury everything, no matter what or how good it was.

And in the midst of all of that, he knew there was nothing he could do about it. And if there ever had been, it was too late now anyway.

He poured himself a third drink, about three hours after leaving that ridiculously wired house – sprinklers, fireplace, lights and what not controllable by remote – and wondered whether another swig would finally do the job.

A very unbidden feeling crept upon him when he heard the front door close just then, and his brows knitted involuntarily.

He wished she hadn't come tonight. Out of all nights.

He felt too confused and tired to know how on earth he was supposed to behave towards her, now that he had realized all these things that wouldn't leave his mind.

He kept his eyes fixed to the tumbler and tried not to tense as her arms sneaked around his waist, her chin coming to rest on his shoulder. Her skin still radiated coldness, and she smelled of the winter that hadn't arrived yet, but was in the air outside already, like something lingering just out of sight.

"Hey", she said softly, her warm breath brushing his ear.

"Hey." He didn't turn to look at her, or move much at all. She felt so familiar against him by now, as if she really belonged here. But he still was so tangled up in his thoughts and the day and a distant past, that he didn't feel like _he_ really belonged here, and wasn't even sure if he wanted to.

"Long day?"

"Kinda."

One of those elaborate answers. Meaning _There might've been something bothering me, but I'm not gonna tell you, 'cause I never talk about such things._

Hollis had to smile. Well, at least she knew that nothing was that much out of the ordinary. Or so she told herself.

"Case closed?"

He was silent for a moment, then just answered, "Yeah", and gently freed himself from her embrace. He picked up his glass and stepped away from the kitchen counter, and her.

Hollis was well aware of the slight sense of perplexity that tapped her on the shoulder at that, even though she deliberately ignored it.

While Jethro was very careful about keeping people at bay where his feelings were concerned, he didn't usually mind physical closeness. Not from her, at any rate.

She was surprised at how he seemed eager to bring some distance between them tonight.

And avoided making eye contact.

"What have you been doing?" he asked, somewhat absently, before she had a chance to try and dig deeper.

"I met with some people from USIS today", she replied after a short, hesitant pause, and accepted the glass he had just fetched from a cupboard for her.

"Yeah?"

She nodded slowly, watching him for a few moments to see if he would actually look at her.

But he didn't. It almost was as if he were avoiding her gaze.

"Yeah", she confirmed, and turned to pour herself a drink as well. "They went into more detail about the job they're offering me, it sounds quite good."

"So?" Jethro prompted. "Are you taking the job?"

She shrugged and, taking a sip, turned around again. "I'm still not sure about it. I think I'd like to, but …" Her voice trailed and she gave him a thoughtful look. "What do you think?"

"Holly, why do you keep asking me that?" He sounded almost exasperated, exactly the way she had expected, and she knew the corner of her mouth was twitching.

He didn't like people repeating things over, especially not when it was question he didn't want to be asked, that they repeated.

Perhaps she missed that other, less easily definable connotation in his voice on purpose.

"Because I want our lives to fit together", she said. "Seeing how they're somewhat connected now, I'd say that makes sense, don't you?" She paused, slightly amused by that oh so typical annoyance of his, that was always of a milder and a lot less serious nature with her than it was with other people.

"Why do _you_ keep refusing to answer me?"

"Because", he said, sounding as if he thought the matter must be perfectly obvious, "I don't want you to fit your life around something that might not even be there anymore by the time you start that job."

It took Hollis a few moments to process that answer.

Her question had been rather teasing, and probably more rhetorical than not, and this reply felt like an invisible wall she had just crashed into while she'd been strolling along quite unsuspectingly.

It threw her off balance, completely.

For a few moments, she tried to find the real meaning in it, insisting that she must have gotten something wrong. When she didn't succeed, she stumbled.

"What?"

A fleeting expression of regret passed over Jethro's face, but it had vanished again almost before she could even be sure it hat really been there.

He had felt it, at any rate, a brief pang of regret over his words, at how he had let them lip out carelessly.

But it didn't even take him a lot of strength to brush that sentiment away. Just a flick of his hand, really, and quickly reminding himself that anything else would have been just another lie anyway.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Hollis asked again after a couple of moments, and he didn't need to look at her to know that she was confused, but not as clueless as she wanted to be.

No point in answering, then. No point in getting any clearer and hurting her more while she had already figured out the truth herself.

_Please_, she thought, _talk to me. For once_.

But Jethro didn't. Naturally.

Suddenly she was very angry. Shocked and angry.

"Are you saying", she began, louder than she had intended, "that you're already expecting this relationship to end?"

He wanted to say _No_, with all his heart, but there was no way he would let that one syllable get across his lips.

"All this time that I believed we were trying to make this work, you already knew it wouldn't last?"

"I don't know what's gonna happen", he replied, as if anything he said could still ease the hurt that was becoming very prominent in her voice now.

"Oh please, Jethro", she said. "Of course it's gonna end if you're thinking about this relationship as something that _might not be there anymore once you start that job._"

She just couldn't believe what she had heard. Probably mostly because she didn't want to admit that she had been that wrong about somebody, and something.

That she had been relying on him, on _them_, and had thought that the ground was really solidifying beneath them, given time.

That she had let herself be led to believe.

"Come on," she said quietly. "Say something. I know you don't like talking, and mostly, that's fine, but if I'm mistaking something here, you're gonna have to tell me." She paused, and actually allowed her desperation to show, if briefly. "Please tell me."

Silence.

_How stupid_. What had she been expecting. Jethro didn't talk in riddles when he wanted to say something. That was too complicated, and pointless anyway. It came down to the literal sense of words with him.

So if he was being silent now, than there evidently wasn't anything left to explain.

She released a deep breath and slowly shook her head, sniffing quietly. Probably still from the cold outside.

"And I thought I really was smarter than that" she remarked with a very odd smile. "Than to let myself be fooled like this."

She made a strange gesture with one hand and looked at him, the anger subsided and the hurt much more clearly visible in her eyes that she most likely would have wished.

It was just that the mask she could wear if she chose when she needed it, didn't work that well anymore around him. She had trusted him too much.

"You don't even care that much, do you?" she asked quietly.

_Because_ _if you did_, she added in her mind, _I suppose that this would be the moment even you would open your mouth._

"I'm sorry, Holly."

And he was.

Sorry for putting her through this, sorry for not even being able to explain, and sorry for having allowed it to come to this.

Hollis only closed her eyes, briefly, and shook her head again.

_Of course_, she thought. Of course he would say that. Sorry.

But Jethro's apologies always only were to say, _I can't change it._

Sorry that things are the way they are, but this is it. You deal with the outcome yourself.

"Yeah", she replied eventually. "Me too."

She moved to put her not yet drained glass on the counter and then made her way to the door.

"Good night, Jethro," she said, turning around again once before vanishing into the dark hall.

Maybe it was better this way.

Maybe better for her to think he was really just a bastard than to learn all those well-hidden truths behind all the things he did.

Better for her to believe he hadn't been that serious about the two of them at all, than to find out what really kept him away from her, even if he actually was very serious about them.

Better for her to get out of the quicksand while she still could, than to be drawn in and swallowed like everything else.

It wasn't as if he didn't trust her. He did.

But he couldn't have told her about Shannon and Kelly. Because they were the key too an old, dusty box, and there was no way he could ever let Hollis look inside that box.

Better for her to hate him than to find out the truth.

He listened to her steps in the hall, then on the front porch a moment before the door closed, and took another swig of Bourbon.

Finding that bitter taste still sticking to his tongue like it would never go away again.

_Fin_

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